The economic valuation is crucial to estimate non-marketed goods, which refer to public willingness to pay (WTP) for conservation efforts in the tourism area. Both local communities and visitors play an important role in developing sustainable tourism and well-being. However, the information on economic valuation based on their preferences and well-being is still limited in the world heritage site Gunung Mulu National Park (GM...

The processes that control diversification and speciation in deep-sea species are poorly known. Here, we analyzed data produced by Restriction-Site Associated DNA Sequencing (RAD-Seq) of octocorals in the genus Paramuricea to elucidate diversification patterns and examine the role of environmental gradients in their evolution. The genus Paramuricea evolved around 8 MYA, with a high probability of a broad ancestral depth range...

Global oceanic pH is lowering, which is causing great concern for the natural functioning of marine ecosystems. Current pH predictions are based on open ocean models; however, coastal zones are dynamic systems with seawater pH fluctuating temporally and spatially. To understand how coastal ecosystems will respond in the future, we first need to quantify the extent that local processes influence the pH of coastal zones. With th...

Understanding the molecular basis of repeatedly evolved phenotypes can yield key insights into the evolutionary process. Quantifying gene flow between populations is especially important in interpreting mechanisms of repeated phenotypic evolution, and genomic analyses have revealed that admixture occurs more frequently between diverging lineages than previously thought. In this study, we resequenced 47 whole genomes of the Mex...

Leafcutter ants propagate co‐evolving fungi for food. The nearly 50 species of leafcutter ants ( Atta , Acromyrmex ) range from Argentina to the United States, with the greatest species diversity in southern South America. We elucidate the biogeography of fungi cultivated by leafcutter ants using DNA sequence and microsatellite‐marker analyses of 474 cultivars collected across the leafcutter range. Fungal cultivars belong to t...

From a database of approximately 5,000 Hawaiian humpback whales identified photographically between 1976 and 2010, we extracted 71 males and 39 females having resighting spans of 10 or more years, from first to most recent sighting. Findings included: (1) the male‐biased sex ratio was like that found in breeding grounds worldwide; (2) the mean span for males of 20.7 yr (maximum = 32 yr) did not differ significantly from the me...

Invasive tags designed to provide information on animal movements through radio or satellite monitoring have tremendous potential for the study of whales and other cetaceans. However, to date there have been no published studies on the survival of tagged animals over periods of years or decades. Researchers from the National Marine Mammal Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution tracked five humpback whales with...